St. Catherine of Alexandria

A virgin and martyr whose feast is celebrated in the Latin Church and in the
various Oriental churches on 25 November, and who for almost six centuries was
the object of a very popular devotion.

Of noble birth and learned in the sciences, when only eighteen years old,
Catherine presented herself to the Emperor Maximinus who was violently
persecuting the Christians, upbraided him for his cruelty and endeavoured to
prove how iniquitous was the worship of false gods. Astounded at the young
girl's audacity, but incompetent to vie with her in point of learning the tyrant
detained her in his palace and summoned numerous scholars whom he commanded to
use all their skill in specious reasoning that thereby Catherine might be led to
apostatize. But she emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her
adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were
at once put to death. Furious at being baffled, Maximinus had Catherine scourged
and then imprisoned. Meanwhile the empress, eager to see so extraordinary a
young woman, went with Porphyry, the head of the troops, to visit her in her
dungeon, when they in turn yielded to Catherine's exhortations, believed, were
baptized, and immediately won the martyr's crown. Soon afterwards the saint, who
far from forsaking her Faith, effected so many conversions, was condemned to die
on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously
destroyed. The emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels
carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in
her honour. So far the Acts of St. Catherine.

Unfortunately we have not these acts in their original form, but transformed
and distorted by fantastic and diffuse descriptions which are entirely due to
the imagination of the narrators who cared less to state authentic facts than to
charm their readers by recitals of the marvellous. The importance attached
throughout the Middle Ages to the legend of this martyr accounts for the
eagerness and care with which in modern times the ancient Greek, Latin and
Arabic texts containing it have been perused and studied, and concerning which
critics have long since expressed their opinion, one which, in all likelihood,
they will never have to retract. Several centuries ago when devotion to the
saints was stimulated by the reading of extraordinary hagiographical narrations,
the historical value of which no one was qualified to question, St. Catherine
was invested by Catholic peoples with a halo of charming poetry and miraculous
power.

Ranked with St. Margaret and St. Barbara as one of the fourteen most helpful
saints in heaven, she was unceasingly praised by preachers and sung by poets. It
is a well known fact that Bossuet dedicated to her one of his most beautiful
panegyrics and that Adam of Saint-Victor wrote a magnificent poem in her honour:
Vox Sonora nostri chori, etc. In many places her feast was celebrated with the
utmost solemnity, servile work being suppressed and the devotions being attended
by great numbers of people. In several dioceses of France it was observed as a
Holy Day of obligation up to the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
splendour of its ceremonial eclipsing that of the feasts of some of the Apostles.
Numberless chapels were placed under her patronage and her statue was found in
nearly all churches, representing her according to medieval inconography with a
wheel, her instrument of torture. Whilst, owing to several circumstances in his
life, St. Nicholas of Myra, was considered the patron of young bachelors and
students, St. Catherine became the patroness of young maidens and female
students. Looked upon as the holiest and most illustrious of the virgins of
Christ, it was but natural that she, of all others, should be worthy to watch
over the virgins of the cloister and the young women of the world.

The spiked wheel having become emblematic of the saint, wheelwrights and
mechanics placed themselves under her patronage. Finally, as according to
tradition, she not only remained a virgin by governing her passions and
conquered her executioners by wearying their patience, but triumphed in science
by closing the mouths of sophists, her intercession was implored by theologians,
apologists, pulpit orators, and philosophers. Before studying, writing, or
preaching, they besought her to illumine their minds, guide their pens, and
impart eloquence to their words. This devotion to St. Catherine which assumed
such vast proportions in Europe after the Crusades, received additional eclat in
France in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it was rumoured that she
had appeared to Joan of Arc and, together with St. Margaret, had been divinely
appointed Joan's adviser.

Although contemporary hagiographers look upon the authenticity of the various
texts containing the legend of St. Catherine as more than doubtful, it is not
therefore meant to cast even the shadow of a doubt around the existence of the
saint. But the conclusion reached when these texts have been carefully studied
is that, if the principal facts forming the outline are to be accepted as true,
the multitude of details by which these facts are almost obscured, most of the
wonderful narratives with which they are embellished, and the long discourses
that are put into the mouth of St. Catherine, are to be rejected as inventions,
pure and simple. An example will illustrate. Although all these texts mention
the miraculous translations of the saint's body to Mount Sinai, the itineraries
of the ancient pilgrims who visited Sinai do not contain the slightest allusion
to it. Even in the eighteenth century Dom Deforis, the Benedictine who prepared
an edition of Bossuet's works, declared the tradition followed by this orator in
his panegyric on the saint, to be in a great measure false, and it was just at
this time that the feast of St. Catherine disappeared from the Breviary of Paris.
Since then devotion to the virgin of Alexandria has lost all its former
popularity.